Security fears over carnival

Police and council officers are concerned about the lack of trained stewards for this year's Notting Hill Carnival.

With only six days to go until the finale of Europe's biggest street party, the Notting Hill Carnival Trust (NHCT) is training 340 stewards in emergency first aid, fire safety and dealing with troublemakers.

This compares with 600 trained stewards who lined the route at last year's Carnival. Police sources have revealed that this is not enough to ensure the safety of the revellers expected this year - more than 1.5 million people.

The Met sources add that they have only held back from going public so far for fear of sparking a row.

A spokeswoman for Kensington and Chelsea council - which oversees the Carnival with the Met, the GLA and Westminster council - admitted the council was also worried. She said: "There are still some concerns that we and the police have regarding safety, which have yet to be resolved.

"We want this to be a safe and happy event and, in the final week, we will be working with the trust, the police and others to ensure that the public are as safe as possible at Carnival."

Following the murder of two revellers during the 2000 celebrations, the trust was ordered to recruit and train 600 staff to line the procession route last year.

In addition, more than 10,000 Met officers were deployed at a cost of £5.6 million - the largest amount the force has spent on a single operation.

Even so, Met Commissioner Sir John Stevens warned people not to attend last year's event because of fears for public safety. He later withdrew the remark.

The figure of 600 stewards for 2001 was required by the GLA, which paid £160,000 to help ensure public safety. The GLA will tomorrow release £165,000 to pay for this year's event, suggesting that a similar number of stewards was expected.

While the 340 stewards will be joined by a further 600 staff accompanying each float as it passes through the Notting Hill streets, none of these extra staff have received specific training in emergency procedures.

This year the trust had planning to have 1,000 stewards along the route, with the figure rising to 2,000 in 2003.

However, these plans were drastically scaled down following the suspension of NHCT chief executive Claire Holder in March 2000, and a row with the GLA over the withholding of its funding.

NHCT vice-chairman Ansel Wong said: "This year we are proposing a different approach, because of a change in the routes and because of a different assessment of the risk we have conducted with the police.

"If we had earlier indications about funding, and we were more successful in procuring sponsors, then I'm sure the planning would have been less stressful for us."

Ms Holder added her concerns today, warning that extra police would have to be called in as a fall-back measure if there were too few stewards to control the crowd.

She added: "It's never a good thing if you have got too few stewards. People will always criticise you for compromising public safety."

Extra measures are in place this year to cut down on crime at the event.

Police plan to use 80 CCTV cameras to monitor the crowd, and the event will shut down at 7pm - two hours earlier than last year. Kensington and Chelsea hopes to ensure " normality returning by 9pm".

Earlier this year, there were doubts about whether the Carnival would even take place. Its key public backers threatened to withhold £300,000 in funding in January, while the GLA refused to contribute £160,000 in February.

Both cases involved doubts about the event's management and organisation. The previous year funding from the GLA went towards the fees for stewarding the event.

A month later, in-fighting among organisers of the Carnival led to an attempted coup, in which one faction attempted to take over their headquarters by having the locks changed. The fallout from the affair cost Ms Holder her job.